Information Security Discussed at the Dushanbe Summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation

The SCO Member States reaffirm the principle of national sovereignty in cyberspace in the Dushanbe Summit Declaration. India, Pakistan and Iran are identified as possible future members of the SCO.

A week after NATO’s Wales Summit, delegations from the SCO Member States (China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan), as well as from some SCO observer states (Afghanistan, India, Pakistan), met in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, on 11-12 September 2014. The Dushanbe Summit dealt with the traditional SCO topics of combating terrorism, extremism, and separatism, as well as with the situation in Afghanistan, nuclear non-proliferation, economic cooperation, and information security.1

5. The SCO Member States step up joint efforts to create a peaceful, secure, fair and open information space, based on the principles of respect for national sovereignty and non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries. They will cooperate in preventing the use of information and communications technologies which intend to undermine the political, economic and public safety and stability of the Member States, as well as the universal moral foundations of social life, in order to stop the promotion of the ideas of terrorism, extremism, separatism, radicalism, fascism and chauvinism by the use of the Internet.

The Member States advocate equal rights of all countries in Internet governance and the sovereign right of states to govern the Internet in their respective national segments, including the provision of security.

The Member States support the development of universal rules, principles and norms of responsible behaviour of states in the information space, and they consider the ‘Code of Conduct in the Field of Ensuring International Information Security’,3 disseminated on behalf of the Member States as an official document of the UN, to be an important step in that direction.4

This language is in line with the SCO efforts so far.5 It expresses the will of the governments of the SCO Member States to continue oversight of the Internet on their territory without foreign interference, which can be linked with the aim to have better control over the flow and content of information. The declaration reaffirms that governing ‘the Internet in their respective national segments’ is regarded as a sovereign right of states.

The declaration also puts a spin on the reference to the Code of Conduct; the adopted text does not mention that the ‘Code of Conduct’ is a draft which, while submitted by a group of SCO Member States to the UN Secretary General, has never been put forward to the General Assembly or any other UN body.

New members?

The SCO Heads of State also agreed on the procedure for granting SCO membership to new states and on an updated Model Memorandum on the obligations of a state applying for membership of the SCO.6 Pakistan, India and Iran are seen as prospective members.7 The process of admission may take considerable time due to political disagreements among the current and potential SCO members.8 Nevertheless, according to some sources, India and Pakistan could well become Member States at the next SCO summit, planned for 2015 in Ufa, Bashkortostan, Russia.9

Note by INCYDER: This is the exact translation of the title of the document from the Russian text. It probably refers to the document submitted to the UN as ‘Draft International Code of Conduct for Information Security’ in 2011. [↩]